The number and size of multimedia works, collections, and databases, whether personal or commercial, have grown in recent years with the advent of compact disks, MP3 disks, affordable personal computer and multimedia systems, the Internet, and online media sharing websites. Being able to efficiently browse these files and to discern their content is important to users who desire to make listening, cataloguing, indexing, and/or purchasing decisions from a plethora of possible audiovisual works and from databases or collections of many separate audiovisual works.
A classification system for categorizing the audio portions of multimedia works can facilitate the browsing, selection, cataloging, and/or retrieval of preferred or targeted audiovisual works, including digital audio works, by categorizing the works by the content of their audio portions. One technique for classifying audio data into music and speech categories by audio feature analysis is discussed in Tong Zhang, et al.,Chapter 3, Audio Feature Analysis and Chapter 4, Generic Audio Data Segmentation and Indexing, in CONTENT-BASED AUDIO CLASSIFICATION AND RETRIEVAL FOR AUDIOVISUAL DATA PARSING (Kluwer Academic 2001), the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.